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Mind talks loud, while heart often whispers. Mind wanders seeking attention, while heart stays singing its own song. Mind generates thoughts that come and go, while heart creates feelings that last long. Yet heart never argues, because it knows, that truth never needs a proof.
I used to rely heavily on my mind to make decisions and tended to ignore my feelings, until I felt deeply trapped in my mind by the restrictions it imposed. I was tired of all the worries, analyses and predictions. Then I decided to start a new journey of choosing heart over brain, and believed that by doing this, I could experience true freedom and happiness, and live out my authentic self.
That was when my battle with my mind began.
I deeply believed that following my heart brought love and freedom, while following my mind led to fear and limitations. Living in my mind is like being stuck of a programmed system, where all the perceptions and decisions were shaped by past experiences, but life was always more than that. Future was full of things that mind couldn’t predict or even imagine, and limiting myself in my mind gave me a narrow view of my life and made me live unconsciously, repeating the past over and over again. By doing so, I lost my free will.
It was no surprise that I saw my mind as my biggest enemy at that time. To me, it always tried to control me, holding me back from making the best choices and sabotaging my mental health with overthinking and stories it made about unknown outcomes. I refused to compromise, instead, the louder my mind shouted, the more determined I was to win the battle, from a simple decision of taking a roller coaster to a significant one of switching programs in college. When my mind tried to scare me by listing all the potential risks and consequences, I chose to still proceed. Taking the roller coaster brought me excitement, and switching to Psychology opened a door towards peace and fulfillment.
But I never thought things could go wrong.
I began to hold tightly to the voice of my heart, spending plenty of time and effort trying to distinguish it from the voice of my mind, only to make the “right” decision. Now the process was never about love or freedom, it was full of successes and failures. I felt nothing but exhaustion and lost.
I then realized that my efforts were not driven by love, instead, they were driven by fear: fear of making wrong choices, of losing the possibilities life offered, of living a meaningless life. Throughout the process, I had forgotten to return to the life itself and fully embrace every second of it.
Chasing freedom resulted in restrictions, and chasing rightness resulted in hesitation.
This was not the life I wanted, so after a long struggle, I decided to change. The other day, I asked ChatGPT the same question of choosing heart over mind, and it answered:
“Stop labeling every choice as ‘heart vs brain’. That keeps you stuck. Instead, ask: Does this align with who I want to be?”
This struck me hard. I began asking myself who I wanted to be, and whether my decisions reflected my true identity. I learnt to see failures as trials, and to reconcile with my mind, understanding that it was trying to protect me from harm and that this habit had been formed in the past. It was never wrong; it was just not adaptive to what I wanted to pursue now, and this perspective brought me peace.
I also noticed that what weakened my power was never making a wrong choice; rather, it was the hesitation and overthinking. By doing this, I unconsciously told myself over and over again that I feared failures and was not strong enough to face the consequences of a wrong decision and take the initiative to make changes. Making a wrong choice that ended in an unsatisfying outcome was never a failure, it was a learning process, a step towards finding my own path and redefining myself.
Now, I’m working on letting go of the battle. And guess what? When I stop trying to dig out the voice of my heart, it surfaces naturally.
